--XLII--

As I flexed the fingers in both my hands- and adjusted the wet cotton bandages on the left one- I knew someone was going to be visiting the forests around V8 for miracle apples soon. I adjusted my dirty, bloody green jacket, pulling it up, tucked in my bloody red shirt, reached down to straighten by blood-soaked black jeans- and barely whispered the words; sent them to him from miles and miles away. "Thanks, Ember."

Nightingale

Day #45

Subprocedure Nine

"Tell me you miss me."

The woman in front of me was blond. I remember because one side of her face was almost totally covered by it. The other half was scarred; her cheek and her neck both had red marks on them, and blood.

So did mine.

I said nothing. Whoever this person was, it did not matter. Were they worth a response, no one knows.

She was, of course, taller than I was- as most people were- her eyes blue; both of them tinted a shade of red mixed with violet, from whatever chemicals were on her. In each of her hands she held jagged, curved, asymmetrical shards of what looked like brown glass; her breath... it smelled terribly.

Smelled terribly of alcohol.

My head spun. The smell... and something else.

I didn't know why exactly, but for some inexplicable reason, I wanted to be anywhere else. Anywhere but near whoever this person was. I took a step back, and then, when I did, my shoulders and head immediately bounced off of what felt like a human body. If I think about it now, I'm not sure if it really was fear that I felt.

Fear, or revulsion.

Subtly, I shifted my bare feet on the floor, sliding them across the smooth surface. Tile, some kind of scarlet color; some of them were a slightly lighter shade of deep red, some darker. Cold, like the rest of the room. Or at least at that moment it was. This was what it felt like:

I had no memories; no context, no awareness except for what felt like fabric pressed against my back and my feet. It was soft. Velour and velveteen, but it wasn't there. I felt it and yet, it wasn't something I could put hands on- because it wasn't there. Or maybe it was somehow invisible? Even now, I don't really remember which room I was in. With my less damaged hand- my right one- I probed the ankles, the bridges, and the arches of my feet, or as much as I could, at least- because that was a feat as close to impossible as it could possibly get. I touched my back, which was a bit easier. Nothing. There were blue lights in the room- blue mixed with white. Was it antiseptic in the air, mixed with the liquor breath? I didn't know.

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This was all that I could remember. My hands- they were tied. The rope I actually can, and I do, remember. It was black, and it was tied tight; much too tight. And I was, yet again, gagged. At that minute, it felt like the first time something abhorrent was in my mouth- something that I just didn't want there. No, it wasn't the first time. Not by a horrendously long shot; not in the least, not in any way.

I shut my eyes.

--

I didn't know how long my eyes were closed for; I also don't remember even opening them- but then they were open, or it seemed. Bats flew above us. There were five of us; I was the only child in the room. Were they bats, or were they just shadows? Shadows which blended, almost perfectly, with the backdrop? Because, apart from the polychromatic, deep crimson and scarlet floor of different hues, this room was black.

Somehow, I was more comfortable that way. A dark black room was less likely to show me horrors I didn't have to know.

But, of course, it was already too late then, anyway.

The contraption on my mouth loosened, and fell to the red tile floor with a loud clack. It was covered heavily in spit, and covered even more heavily in blood. The blond woman didn't go anywhere; there she was, in front of me. Not speaking, but looking at me as though there was something she wanted to say. I didn't care to know what it was. I turned around, and I was right; a body was behind me. It wasn't a dead one. Instead, it was the man who sought me out often during this experiment.

It was a fair deal. He got what he wanted, I got a warm bed. He got what he wanted, I didn't starve. As if the Lowdown wasn't bad enough. Yet at the same time, he was still kinder than most of the people I'd had to... had to eff with. Literally...

I can't even say that word sometimes.

I almost liked him, in some ways. Until the tortures began.

When the only source of comfort seems to come from the thing that hurts you-

You just... you don't know, sometimes.

I felt something, something grasping at my head; at my mind. To this day I don't know what it was. Sometimes, I assume it was myself, my self, reaching out to me- telling me that something was wrong and that whatever I was feeling was a feeling that I was programmed to feel.

To justify what it was. Conditioning.

See, grooming was one thing. Brainwashing was another.

I swallowed spit and blood, and the forced chemicals that still remained on both my tongue as well as the roof of my mouth, and attempted to clear my throat. Of course, it ended up only sounding like a very soft whimper.

I took one deep breath, and then spoke.

"Are you ever gonna tell me what your name is?" I said.

The man smiled at me. Dark, reddish stubble, most of everything else covered by the mask.

"Jeff," he said.

My mind was, to say the least, cloudy. They'd injected me five times already that day, and that didn't include all of the substances that they made us swallow.